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Autograph Letter, Signed, to Black [with] The Story of My Life, 1st.

Darrow, Clarence; Black, Forrest R

Darrow Discusses Prohibition with a Colleague Darrow, Clarence [1857-1938]. [Black, Forrest R]. [Autograph Letter, Signed, To Black, On the Letterhead of the Hotel Fenway, Denedin, Florida, February 26, [1931]. Single 10-1/2" x 7-1/4" sheet. Some toning, two horizontal fold lines, light soiling to upper right hand corner, otherwise fine. [With] Darrow, Clarence [1857-1938]. The Story of My Life. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1932. xiv, 465 pp. Fourteen plates (with 16 illustrations). First edition, first issue (Scribner "A"). Cloth in moderately worn and lightly soiled multi-color Art Deco dust jacket, light toning to text. Check marks and underlining in pencil to a few pages, interior otherwise clean. $1,950. * Black was a law professor at the University of Kentucky and the author of Ill-Starred Prohibition Cases: A Study in Judicial Pathology (1931), which has a foreword by Darrow. Darrow's letter from February 26 was probably written in 1931, the period in which the two exchanged a number of letters about the manuscript of Black's book. Darrow appears to be discussing a passage in the manuscript: "I am convinced that both propositions you are examining would stand the test of law, assuming they ever reached the courts. Of course you and I both know that it would be easier to win on them now than it would have been a few years ago. I can really imagine no argument against it. The only thing that could be said is that it is an effort to do something indirectly that can't be done directly, but that is not a valid objection. It seems to me that essentially every point has been pressed upon." The letter is accompanied by a first edition, first issue, of Darrow's autobiography. Hunsberger, Clarence Darrow: A Bibliography 272.